Build 8 Devlog

Hi again friends. Coming at you with a devlog after the newest update.

First, why it took a while: well, frankly, because coding is a bitch and a half and I'm not good at it. Even with GruntSteel's help, it took me the entirety of December to get the UI up and running, and we're still dealing with some visual issues. And that's on top of coding the new Extras menus, adding text for the character profiles, etc. And in January I got hit by a pretty bad case of writer's block and a bout of depression. Thankfully I was able to work properly once this month rolled around.

So, the actual update. Firstly, I was very excited to get to two particular parts—the dialogue with Omen at the club, and the subsequent action scenes. The former was actually the first scene I wrote in this build, as usually I write all scenes in order. But I had been looking forward to getting into some of the more substantive worldbuilding for a while now, so I decided to start there and fill in the gaps later.

I also just really, really enjoy writing Omen.

Figuring out the action took a long time. From what I've seen, FVNs don't usually do action all that much, and I wanted to make sure that my attempt to have the story go there would be good enough by my standard. Which means lots of tweaking small details—timings on chains appearing, proper sound effects, sprite movement, etc. It's tedious and time-consuming work, but I'm quite happy with what we have. It's not perfect, of course, and I expect to come back to these scenes and refine them even more, but with the resources we have at the moment, I think it's about as good as it could've been.

In terms of story content, the biggest changes between the first draft and the final result came in the scene with Unbound and the last scene of the build with Mnesis, especially the latter. With Unbound, the exposition about Copycat was initially covered by GIL, but the beta readers found it a bit dull and forced, so we moved it to the conversation with Unbound instead. I think it works much better there. (By the way, we'll be seeing her husband fairly soon). The scene following Omen's departure changed a lot more. Initially Mnesis's reaction was much more resigned, and he didn't talk about himself or the issues he sees with Nick becoming Templar all that much. Ultimately, we decided that the scene could use a bit more drama, so I revealed more about Mnesis's true feelings earlier than I had initially intended. I'd say it works well here, though, since the build started with us learning more about his backstory, and now the final scene ties well into those revelations.

On that note, I really have to thank Rov and Sakudoshi. Their feedback has been incredibly helpful, and I don't think I would've been able to get it done without their help. Same goes to Vanillabell for the cool new UI (be sure to compliment him on his work!), and GruntSteel for helping me actually code that UI and other new features.

So, next up is Superfang! Without spoiling too much, look forward to finally meeting Copycat, learning some more about superpowers, and of course more action with our favorite tiger and Hex. I've already posted a couple previews for higher-tier patrons of the art Swaggy has been working on. Copycat's sprite is the next in development, and I'll be posting a preview of that as soon as it's ready.

I hope to have the Extras fully enabled by the time this build goes public. Most of it is coded, it's just those pesky details again. Thankfully, it won't take nearly as much time to code as it did in December. Just squashing those bugs and applying extra polish.

In the long term, I want to revisit the intro to the game and make some changes there. I've already talked about spicing up the first fight we see more, which is still in the works. But I'd like to make the entire introductory sequence punchier (pun intended), and to better establish Nick's personality early on. No concrete dates on that happening, though. For now, continuing the story takes priority.

So, yeah, hoping to be back with more soon. I'll write a monthly status update in a week as well, just to keep everyone in the loop on development status.

P.S. Would you guys be interested in a patron-exclusive Q&A? I was thinking of doing one specifically on worldbuilding questions. If there's interest, we could do one, and have other themed Q&As in the future.